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News, views and musings from the Adobe UK team

Yesterday Adobe customers and partners, speakers and delegates descended on Battersea Park in London for day two of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Summit – which got started literally with a bang!

The Digital Future

Computers, TV’s and minds where blown by the future casting of Nils Muller, during the opening keynote, in which Muller took the audience on a time travelling journey to 2021. He explored the “web of things” – when technology takes on a social life of its own, and further on into the age of connectedness, when all human experiences may one day be augmented by digital technology and data, including contact lenses that recognise faces (and pull in social network updates!) to communication technology controlled entirely by the user’s thoughts!

Behind The Scenes @ Adobe.com

Once the audience was transported back to the present day, they had a chance to go behind the scenes of adobe.com – with a fascinating presentation of how personalisation, content and optimisation have helped the adobe.com make the most out of every visitor. The team behind the site run 8-10 tests every week, changing up style and content to find the perfect mix.

Throughout the day, seminars and breakouts took delegates into the depths of web experience management, social, mobile, privacy and personalisation – wrestling with the big issues of marketing in the age of the “digital self” (for more on that check out our blog wrap up from yesterday!).

The Future Of Digital Publishing

Delegates in the digital publishing track heard from Condé Nast, who have sold over 250,000 versions of their print magazines as digital versions, across titles such as Wired and Vanity Fair. Jamie Bill from Condé Nast walked through his vision of the future for digital publishing and magazines. He believes “a magazine is no longer a printed product – it is a brand”, something which the CN team are trying to support across all their titles, with social media content, online extras and tablet editions.

The day wrapped up with some exclusive sneak peeks of what’s coming soon to Adobe Digital Marketing Suite which we be sharing with you here on the blog soon, so stay tuned! You can keep up with all the reactions from Summit by following @AdobeUK and @AdobeSummit and join the conversation by leaving your comments here or on Twitter using #AdobeSummit.

With over 1,700 attendees packing out the halls and pavilions in Battersea Park, seminars and workshops at every turn and an amazing line up of inspiring keynotes, the first day of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Summit 2012 was pretty hard to sum up – but we’ve given it a go…

A picture of the future of Digital Marketing

Kicking off the day, Adobe’s SVP Brad Rencher presented Adobe’s vision of the “Digital Self” – he examined the way that our digital signals, created by hundred of social actions, check ins, live streams and status updates, are creating a wealth of data that marketers can use to bring a deeply personal experience to customers.

“It’s not just about rows in spreadsheets but about real people who have real needs” – Brad Rencher, Adobe SVP Digital Marketing

Brad also spoke about the need for marketers to become more savvy when it comes to understanding this data. He emphasised that consumers are starting to wake up to personalisation and what it means for them, and in the future they will demand it. The message for marketers is clear: be prepared.

Privacy vs. personalisation

Among the many session streams on offer throughout the day, many were drawn to the fascinating discussion in the London 2012 room, chaired by the UK’s Digital Champion, Martha Lane Fox. Martha led a panel discussion, looking at the balancing act that consumers, regulators and marketers are all concerned about at the moment – that of personalisation and privacy.

Dave Evans from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), who has been dealing with the recent EU ePrivacy Directive which will affect all websites using cookies from the end of May 2012. One hot topic of conversation was around how marketers will be affected by the changes, in particular how to know where the boundaries are between using customer data to help personalise experiences, without intruding into personal privacy, commenting on the issue Evans said, “We need companies to test the limits of personalisation and privacy in order to move forward”.

Getting in a Huff about sleep and connectivity

The highlight of the day was a fascinating closing keynote from founder of the Huffington Post – Arianna Huffington. Since launching the “HuffPo” seven years ago, Arianna and her team have seen massive changes in the worlds of online journalism, blogging and user generated content – changes that they have been a major catalyst of, primarily through their open approach to allowing reader interaction and input across the site.

She spoke about the Huffington Post’s “nap” rooms – rooms on site at the website’s offices where employees can recharge. She herself is a big advocate for getting enough sleep and taking “digital retreats” where no technology is allowed – something which for many in the room was a challenging concept, we’re sure!

Keep track of all the #AdobeSummit news

The Summit has continued today and we will give you a full wrap up in tomorrow’s blog – for now, keep track of all the news, announcements, gossip and much more by following @AdobeSummit and @AdobeUK on Twitter or track the #AdobeSummit tag for updates from attendees.